It was a marble column, without flutes, composed of drums with a Corinthian capital, surmounted by a statue of the emperor.

[2] The column no longer exists, but fragments belonging to it were discovered in the mid-20th century in the grounds of the Topkapı Palace, including the capital and the impost block atop it, a complete column drum and some parts of a second, and the statue's pedestal, which was originally separated from the impost by a missing plinth.

[2] The column's existence in the Forum of Leo, near the Topkapı Palace, is attested by mentions in several Byzantine Greek texts: the Patria of Constantinople, the Parastaseis syntomoi chronikai,[4] and George Cedrenus.

Carved representations of laurel wreaths surround one edge of the surviving drums of the column shaft.

The capital itself had human face protomes projecting from the centre of each side of the block, between the volutes where a fleuron would typically be.

The preserved column drums show that the 34 cm broad wreaths concealed joins fixed by three or more metal dowels, whose holes survive.

[2] The impost block, over a metre high and nearly 3 m wide at the top, has a frieze of vegetal decoration of acanthus leaves.

[3] According to a 15th-century Latin translation of a work by Manuel Chrysoloras, it stood "on the hill of Byzantium, to the right of the temple of Peace" (super Byzantiorum tumulo ad dexteram templi Pacis).

[3] It may have been the same church of Saints Peter and Paul that a hundred years later the augustus Justin II had (re)built in 571.